


I Don't Have These Answers

by andifiquitnow



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andifiquitnow/pseuds/andifiquitnow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-series 1. Hardy had said her life is here, in Broadchurch, and it takes her a long week to decide if he's right. She decides that for once, he's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Have These Answers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stickmarionette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickmarionette/gifts).



> Hi hello! I hope you like this. I had fun writing it. There are so many ways their story could go.

He’d taken her job. He’d driven her mad. And yet at the end of it all, he is the only one she can talk to. The only one who understands.

He goes to Glasgow to get a pacemaker put in. She knows he doesn’t want to, but he can’t ignore his doctors anymore, or her. She tells him flat out to get it done, and he sort of seems to give in. It’s not like he has any plans. Ellie thinks the police might take him back as a civilian, in a kind of consulting position, but he seems resistant to the idea. He thought this case was going to be his last. His penance and his finale. Ellie thinks that’s stupid. But she wants to give up too, so who is she to say differently.

Hardy had said her life is here, in Broadchurch, and it takes Ellie a long week to decide if he’s right.

She decides that for once, he’s not.

She takes Tom and Fred and moves to Glasgow. It’s too big and busy for her, but Tom seems to like it. He doesn’t talk at all about what happened. Ellie isn’t sure that’s a good thing, but then she thinks maybe it’s best to forget. She never will, but Tom is young. Maybe he’ll recover.

He makes some friends, and tells everyone he’s a test tube baby when they ask about his dad. She’s not sure where he picked that up, but she lets it go. It’s a good enough story.

With Joe in jail, Ellie has to look after Fred full-time. The police department puts her on leave with pay, but she suspects it’s not strictly on the up-and-up, and that someone is doing her a favour. She’s going to have to go back to work soon.

She doesn’t think she wants to be a detective anymore, but she’s not sure what else to do. She likes working with people, but doesn’t trust herself anymore. She can feel it.

“Maybe I need a total change,” she says to Hardy.

They’re sitting on the couch in his flat. She visits him with Fred twice a week when Tom is at school. The normal recovery time for a pacemaker operation is four weeks, but it’s been five and he’s still getting used to it. She’s not sure how close to dying he’d been, but she thinks it was very close.

“What do you mean, a total change?”

“If I’m not going to be a detective. Maybe I should, I don’t know, be a secretary or something. Work in a bank.”

“You, sitting behind a desk?” He says. “Filing papers? You’d never last.”

“I was always very good at paperwork, thank you very much,” she says. “I just meant, a job where I don’t have to interact with people so much. They ask so many questions.”

Hardy looks at her. “They do.”

“Oi, are you making a dig at me?”

“No, of course, no. I just know how that feels.”

She shifts Fred where he is asleep against her chest. “What do you think I should do then?”

“Are you really sure you’re done with the police?”

“Are you?” She counters.

“That’s fair.” He pauses. “You were a good detective, Ellie. The police would be sorry to lose you. Are you sure you don’t want to at least think about it?”

“I just couldn’t,” she bursts out. “After-- after all those weeks, living with-- and what he did. And I never knew. No. No, I’m done.”

She’s woken Fred up. He smiles around at them and waves. Ellie runs a finger down his nose, smiling back then standing up and putting him in the stroller.

“Every time I look at him,” she says, speaking to the carriage, “I see Joe.”

Alec says nothing.

“I’ll be off then,” Ellie says, putting on her jacket. “Let you get some rest.”

“Sure,” he says.

“See you on Thursday.”

“You will.”

She comes over and presses a kiss to his cheek before wheeling the stroller out of the flat. She thinks he almost says something else, but he doesn’t.

\--

The next time she visits, he’s brought in a bunch of job hunting flyers.

Ellie is caught off-guard. “You went out to get these for me?”

“Well, the doctor says I should be moving about more. That it would help at this point. So I thought I would get these, you know, to help you find a job.”

“Thank you,” she says. She’s surprised he did that for her. She thinks she’s only just beginning to understand him, when he seems to know her so well. Before the thing that happened, she’d never understood how he could be so cynical, so critical, so unhappy, so utterly unconcerned with some things and obsessively concerned with others. She gets it now. She feels broken in the same places.

She sits beside him on the couch to go through the papers. It’s career counselling stuff and quizzes and that kind of thing. He gets out his laptop and they look at job postings. She does a couple of personality quizzes online and laughs like she hasn’t in a while. She goads him into taking one too, and the results are so ridiculous even he seems amused through his thick shell. She likes it when he laughs.

She promises to update him on the search and kisses his cheek on her way out, like always.

\--

The next time she’s there, the conversation starts innocently enough, but somehow turns to Joe. They don’t usually talk about him or what happened. Ellie thinks it’s her who brings it up, she’s not sure why.

“Even after I knew, I still loved him. I miss him. But I hate him and I never want to see him again. How sick is that.”

“Not sick at all,” he says quietly. “It’s very human.”

“Well then I wish I wasn’t so bloody human! I wish I was more like you.”

He flinches very slightly at her words and she realizes what she’s said. “No, Alec, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just you were always so detached yet committed, you could see so clearly the truth.”

“Is that what you think of me? Ellie, I was trying to catch a murderer! I was trying to save a child. How much more human can you--” He stops. “Get out.”

“What? No, stop, that’s not what I meant. It’s been a comfort to me to have your cool head, your--”

“My inhumanity is soothing to you? That’s good to know.” He stands up. “Get out.”

“No!” She doesn’t know what’s happening.

“Get out!”

So she does. She gathers her things and pushes Fred’s carriage out the door. “I’m sorry,” she says.

He nods, but it’s not an acceptance of her apology, it’s an acknowledgement that she’s spoken.

She leaves, and a new hole opens up in the heart she didn’t even realize she still had. She feels like she’s just made a big mistake.

\--

He doesn’t call her later and she doesn’t visit on the usual day. It drags out until it turns into something else, and it feels like it’s too late.

She craves his presence. She wants to be in his company, but she’s afraid she’s ruined it. Normally she would be the one to break first. She would always talk first, apologize first, go into a situation and get things sorted out. But she’s not sure she’s that person anymore. She doesn’t know who she is, and she takes this as further proof that she shouldn’t be around other humans, or try to relate to them.

She still loves Fred and Tom with all of her being. They’re the exception. She tries to be the best mother she can be. To be the most normal mother. She works hard to not be overprotective. Not to push or worry.

When Fred is old enough, she puts him into childcare and gets a job as a receptionist at small construction company. She takes an accounting class and starts doing the bookkeeping too. It pays just enough, and she works alone most of the time, which she forces herself into liking. Sometimes she’ll catch herself wishing she worked in a big office again, meeting new people all the time, solving problems on the fly. But then she reminds herself how that worked out last time.

She’d cried so many tears. When she’d first found out, she couldn’t stop crying. And now she can’t cry at all.

She’d unhinged a bit when she found out it was Joe. But Alec had been there. He’d been there for her when everything was falling apart and she supposes that’s part of why she wants him around, why she likes him. Because no one else had seen her go through that and still wanted to be around her. Because he had been there for her.

And after a while she starts missing him in different way, one she doesn’t let herself think of because it hurts too much.

\--

A year and a half goes by.

The first time, it was Hardy coming into Ellie’s life. The second time, it’s her coming into his.

She shows up at his office one day out of the blue, quite without meaning to.

It’s a shock to see him sitting there, after missing him for so long.

He stands up. “Ellie.”

Of all the places she’d expected to run into him, working in a police station was not one of them. “What are you doing here,” she says.

“I work here.”

“In a police station?” She’s flummoxed. And maybe a little betrayed. Why does he get to keep being a police officer when she doesn’t?

“As a civilian,” he says. “I consult on cases, and-- other things.”

The only reason Ellie is in the police station in the first place is to pick up a police check report so that she can chaperone one of Tom’s field trips. It’s a thing now, all parents or guardians have to have police checks done in order to work with the kids. Even being a former detective doesn’t exempt her. She needs the form like everyone else. She just didn’t expect to find Hardy with it.

They’re standing there staring at each other. Everyone in the room is looking at them.

Ellie is suddenly mad. “I thought we were the former detectives club!” She’s not sure why she’s mad. After all, she’d originally thought this is exactly what he should do.

“It’s just, they asked me back, and I really don’t know how to do anything else. And you weren’t speaking to me, so.”

“I wasn’t speaking to you? You weren’t speaking to me! You told me to leave!”

“I thought you’d come back!”

Now everyone really is staring at them.

“Would you meet me after work?” He asks more quietly.

Yes, of course. “I can’t today,” she says, truthfully. “Friday. 7pm. The restaurant around the corner from your flat.” She can get a sitter by then.

He nods. “Yes. Good.”

She picks up her paperwork and leaves.

\--

Ellie is oddly nervous getting ready that Friday. It’s not like it’s a date. She stamps down on the idea that she might like it to be before it even becomes a thought. None of that for her. It’s just been so long since she’s seen him, that’s all. Besides, who wouldn’t be nervous getting ready for a dinner like this. What does one wear to meet an estranged co-worker and sometime friend whom you may or may not desperately want back in your life?

But she meets up with him and it’s fine. They have dinner, they talk about their jobs and her kids and his health. It’s almost painfully fine. They don’t talk about anything important.

The dinner is over. He pays, despite her insistence that they split the bill. He tells her he makes more money than she does and she lets it go.

She walks him to his flat, because it’s just around the corner, and outside the door it finally all comes spilling out.

“You can trust me, Ellie,” he says suddenly.

“I know.” It’s a total non-sequitur. She’s confused about what he means, yet wants this conversation so badly.

“You can trust me with, what I mean is, you can trust me.”

“You asked me to leave, what eighteen months ago? You yelled at me. You kicked me out.”

“You called me inhuman!”

“I didn’t! You called yourself inhuman. And then you never phoned!”

“Because you never came back!” He’s yelling. So is she.  
  
She stops. “Why did you think I would?”

“I don’t know, I just did. You’re Ellie Miller. I thought things would be alright.”

“Oh Alec,” she sighs. “I don’t know how to make things alright.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry and I want to make things up to you.”

She nods. It’s ridiculous but she wants to cry. Because it’s like she didn’t realize what was wrong with her life until he was back in it, and then she realized that the problem was that he wasn’t in it.

He’s looking at her with an expression that she can’t identify, and so she walks into him and hugs him tightly. He wraps his arms around her stiffly until she rubs his back and he lets out a gust of air and relaxes.

He steps back. “Before we go on,” he says, “there’s something I need to say.” He has that old look about him like he’s about to say something totally lacking in social niceties. “Ellie, I have feelings for you.”

She hadn’t been expecting that. The shock runs out along her nervous system, through her extremities and into the floor. “You what?”

“When I met you all I could feel was guilt and work. I wanted to make things right for Danny’s family so I could go home and retire in peace, or work myself to death, or something. I hadn’t worked that bit out.”

She reaches out to grip his wrist.

“And I didn’t realize what was happening until it was over, and then everything was wrong. I knew you still loved Joe...”

She draws a quick breath because it’s true.

“...and I didn’t think you’d have me. Rude, former detective who took your job, isn’t very good with kids, has a pacemaker.”

“You’re good with kids,” Ellie gets out. She knows that’s not the issue she should be focussing on but it’s the only one her brain can grab.

He’s waiting for her to say something else. Ellie can’t remember what he’s waiting for. Oh right, the other thing.

“I didn’t know that,” she says. She’s talking about the real thing now. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she says.

He shuffles to the side but it doesn’t hide the look that flashes across his eyes. “That’s fine, I just wanted you to know--”

“No, I mean,” she’s still holding onto his wrist. “I mean, I’m just afraid.” Because of what happened. Because of Joe. She’s looking at him and knows she doesn’t need to say why. She’s afraid to trust anyone. But Alec Hardy isn’t just anyone. He’d been there for her through something she thought she’d never recover from, and he’s only ever been fully worthy of her trust. If it’s going to be anyone, it’s going to be him.

Ellie puts her hands on the sides of his face and kisses him.

She can feel his surprise against her lips and she pulls back to make sure this is okay. She doesn’t even get her mouth open to ask the question when he’s kissing her again.

It’s gentle and hesitant, unfamiliar and yet familiar. She is briefly concerned that she’ll have forgotten how to do this, but the worry vanishes in the feel of his skin, his hands in her hair.

She doesn’t think they’ll push things too far, but maybe they’re both more desperate than she thought, because suddenly they’re pressed together against the door to his flat and all she can feel is the heat of his body and his stubble against her face.

She stops when she needs to catch her breath and wraps both arms around his neck. He drops his head to rest on her shoulder.

“Are you worried we’re doing this because there’s no one else?” She whispers. “That we’re each other’s last resort?”

“No,” he says simply.

Which she thinks might be a bit of a lie, but she doesn’t care. The last place you look is always where you find the thing you’re looking for. She's ready to stop looking.


End file.
